Eternity or Revolution
by Fina Arvanthol
Summary: An experimental one-shot. Stream-of-consciousness from Utena's POV. Explores sexuality, postmodernism, and gender. Contains strong language and adult themes not suitable for immature readers.


**Eternity or Revolution**

End of the World says we can't be together. End of the World says our love is wrong—that what we share really isn't love at all. End of the World wraps his arms around me, in a caged embrace, and whispers threats that tickle like spiders on my neck.

End of the World wants me to be his. End of the World has a phallus that he's stuffed into more cunts than you can count on two hands. They made their _ums _and _ohs _and _ahs _for him. They gripped the sheets and bit their lips and writhed. They performed well for End of the World. Then he pulled the curtain on them, and left them weeping behind the stage.

_Life_ is a performance—a beautiful or ugly one, according to the player. Our clothes are not our costumes, but our personalities. We act like we have control, but half the time we're puppets on popsicle sticks.

There's only one way to take control. To see life for what it is. You cannot be a silent spectator, clapping dumbly as the curtain falls. You must spring forth from your seat, hurl onto the stage, and ruin the performance.

Step one: turn the blinding lights on as the lead makes his climatic soliloquy. Step two: steal the ticket stubs of the audience members and tear them into confetti shreds. Step three: scream so loudly, as the sweat drips from your brow onto the stage, so that even the acoustics of the auditorium cannot resist your protest.

Steps four, five, six, and etcetera: Shove the backhands front and center. Leave them lying face down on the stage. They are hold-up hostages on this pirate plank. Call the playwright forward and have them eat the words of End of the World, the words they wrote one by one.

Have every director, technician, and production agent take their turn under the auditorium sun and let them sizzle and smoke, stutter and shriek. The curtain puller will get the final say in a grand revealing. Cloaked in black, like the shadow reaper, the curtain puller will demonstrate how life and death function. Still, no one will know what they mean.

As everyone is released from the den of alternate reality, spots and polygons blur their vision. There is light, but the shadows are gone, and no one can discern the true nature of the world.

So, they clamor on about what an outstanding play it was. The lead was luminescent, the special effects were sublime, and what a phenomenal story, even if it did fall a bit flat in the end. Nobody understood the symbolism or the dream sequences, but they all coo over the experience.

I aim to bring Revolution. I will bring Revolution, even if I must burn down the Theater. I will Revolutionize the World. It will be a fat, fucking fantastic Revolution that no one will be able to escape—not even End of the World.

We will revere the upside down castle; we will switch our clothes. We will lie naked face to face and whisper secrets that would only shrivel up during the day. We will exchange our tired lines for impromptu banter and empowered tirades and creative vows. Our reflections, in the outpouring of the castle's warm nectar, will lead us to Truth.

Our suffering will be the absence of anything Eternal. Our bliss will be the same.

End of the World will always hover on the fringe, in the dressing room, behind the veil, but he will no longer be a threat. Our chaos will be too much for even him to withstand.

The flower from my breast falls. There will be no Eternity. Nothing Eternal. Everything will wither and die eventually, maybe even my ideas. My thoughts, my words, my Truth will die, but the essential chaos, in its fabulous, paradoxical perfection, will remain, if only to keep love fresh and trendy.

So, damn what End of the World says to his Eternal Hell. I will seek out Anthy now. She is the Rose Bride, and I want to love her, even as each of her petals blows away. I will kiss the bare stem when the petals have gone, but then drop it so I can search out the petals again. It will be an ongoing quest for love: not undying, but changing: love as capricious as the wind.

When the sun finally bursts into cosmic dust and End of the World thinks he has captured the darkness and all its individuals, Anthy and I share a warm embrace. We are center stage, but there is no audience. Only we are witness to the throbbing of our hearts, the quickening of our pulses, the reddening of our cheeks. As our lips meet in a tender kiss, one as breathtaking as a starry night, we seize for a lasting moment the joys of our heart—the songs it sings, the rhythms it drums, the beautiful music it plays for only the ephemeral world.

We burst into orchestra as our tongues lap wildly at each other's cunts, producing juice sweeter than any tropic fruit. Our sex is stage gold, and the truth is warm and cool, light and dark, so much that it drowns out these dichotomies in one arousing, drawn out moan.

End of the World catches us and observes with a smirk on his face, for a few minutes. But then he is consumed by rage, and, flinging his arms out, his shirt flying back and revealing his bare chest, and he commands for extremes and Eternity once more. All so he can fuck me and throw me away and cling to his notion of satisfying existence.

I won't give it to him. I suck away at Anthy's clit until she breaks into a shuddering climax, screaming, "I love you, Utena!"

I gaze down into her watering, sparkling eyes and smile warmly. "I love you, Anthy."

Is our love eternal? Is our love true? As long as we struggle against End of the World, I suppose we'll never know. When he shrieks and tugs at his hair, I assume we are only perpetuating Eternity.

Oh, Anthy, what is best for our love? Is it Eternity? Is it End of the World?

Or is it a Revolution?


End file.
